I made apple butter for the first time last year, and it was awesome. I love it on on cottage cheese. The apple tree behind the house is starting to drop apples, and I wanted to get a jump on it. I gathered and canning comrade Sherry Rieder peeled, cored and sliced.

I made a batch of applesauce, and dumped the rest into the slow cooker. 24 hours later, I had apple butter. I revved up the kettle burner and things were progressing nicely. Until …

I nearly forgot the most important part of the canning process: Tasting the stuff before jarring it up for all eternity. I had two jars in the kettle before I licked a smidge of it off my finger. My mouth positively puckered. “Ahhhh!” I shouted. (Of course, I say that so often, nobody in my house even answers)

I dumped all the jars back into the Crock Pot and dug into the sugar. I’m hopeful that the flavor will mellow in storage. Maybe the apples were just too young.

Here’s how I made the applesauce: 4 quarts of peeled, cored, sliced apples Handfuls of sugar until it tasted right. Generous doses of cinnamon (I like McCormick’s Saigon Cinnamon twice the flavor of the conventional stuff)

A healthy pinch of ground cloves

A tablespoon or so of allspice

I just cooked it, breaking up the thin apple slices until it looked a caramel brown, and jarred it up. Great stuff.